Gates scholarship opens doors to study abroad for two new grads

By SARA MARCUS

Photo by Candace diCarlo

A pair of recent Penn grads have just snagged two brand-new study-abroad
fellowships.

This fall, Bart Szewczyk (W01), of Guttenberg, N.J., and Amanda
Codd (C01), of Morrisville, Pa., will join the inaugural class of
Gates Scholars 40 to 50 Americans in all, plus several hundred
from around the world studying at the University of Cambridge in
England with a full scholarship from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Gates Cambridge Scholarship is poised to join the ranks of the most
prestigious study-abroad fellowships, right alongside peers like the Marshall
and the Rhodes. Penn seniors landed both those fellowships this year,
too.

We spoke with the two Gates winners about their journeys and goals.

Bart Szewczyk: Poland
is a very cool country.

Bart Szewczyks eyes light up when he hears someone pronounce his
consonant-rich Polish last name correctly on the first try: SEV-chik.

Are you of any Slavic background? he asks with great interest.
What part of the region?

Welcome to the world of Bart Szewczyk, where a mix of Polish patriotism
and business-school pragmatism is helping chart a course of global education
and action.

Szewczyks decision to study international relations at Cambridge
may seem odd. After all, he was a finance and legal studies major who
only took one international relations course during his three tightly-packed
years of college one year at New York University, then two years
as a transfer to Wharton.

A closer look reveals the logic of his choice. Szewczyk was born in Warsaw
and moved to the United States with his family in 1990. During subsequent
visits to his homeland, he witnessed the different faces of progress there.

It seems like this is finally Polands chance to do pretty
well, he said, noting that in the last century alone, two world
wars and Soviet control kept the country from achieving its full potential.
Now were free from all of that and were independent
and people are excited about that.

But the whole country doesnt share this optimism about the future,
he said. Some regions are experiencing increased unemployment and hopelessness.

This June, Szewczyk will dive headlong into these conflicts when he interns
in Warsaw at the Committee for European Integration, the agency in charge
of bringing Polands economy into line with the European Unions
entrance requirements. He hopes to figure out how to reform the economy
without leaving anybody behind.

He also wants to make sure that despite modernization, Poland retains
the cultural uniqueness he loves.

Poland is a very cool country, he said. The people are very
friendly. The food is great. We have very good cakes and cold cuts, and
they are disease-free, unlike many of the cold cuts you may find in other
parts of Europe. You should try to visit as often as you can in your life.

Amanda Codd: Ive
been wanting to get out and see what the world is like.

When Amanda Codd came to Penn as a freshman, she missed her high school
friends so much that she considered transferring to Penn State so she
could be with them.

Fortunately for Penn, she found her niche here and stayed. Four years
later, shes not only ready to take a much larger step away from
home shes anxiously awaiting it.

The fact that Ive never left the U.S. is something that recently
has really been getting to me, she said. Ive been wanting
to get out and see what the world is like.

At Cambridge, Codd will get her wish. Shell also study why axons
in the central nervous system dont regenerate after injury to the
brain and spinal cord, even though axons in the peripheral nervous systems
repair themselves.

Her classes at Penn as a biological basis of behavior major never touched
on this particular conundrum. But when she was scanning the list of Cambridge
faculty research areas, this question caught her attention.

Codd is no stranger to research. For her honors thesis, she studied brain
activity in zebra finches. This summer, Cadd will work with her advisor,
Biology Professor Marc Schmidt, as a lab technician in the Penn biology
department. After completing a one-year masters in brain repair
at Cambridge, she intends to get her Ph.D. either at there or in the States.

Cadd credits Art Casciato whom she knew from her days in Harrison
College House and his days as house dean there with clueing her
in to the Gates opportunity. Casciato is the director of the Center for
Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, which advises students as they
apply for fellowships.

I wanted a different way to spend my year before I start to get
my Ph.D., she said. This just seems like it would be a really
fascinating place to spend a year of my life.

Penn Current Express

Quoted Recently

“As we know from the research, the performance of a large firm is due primarily to things outside the control of the top executive. … We call that luck. Executives freely admit this—when they encounter bad luck.”

—J. Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School, on how executives can influence a company’s value. Limited research on the topic has mostly found that broader market forces often have a bigger impact on a company’s success than an executive’s actions. (The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2015)